


The Next Time Around

by QueSeraAwesome



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, F/M, One Shot Collection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-16
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-02-17 14:23:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,658
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2312768
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueSeraAwesome/pseuds/QueSeraAwesome
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How many times do they go around? How many times do they get it wrong? They're losing count.</p><p>A collection of short works on the iterations of Tex and Church</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Start at the End

You’re back. Again.

This is the first thing you know. The first thing you are aware of.

You know things, Agent Texas, when you wake up in a secret Freelancer outpost. Underground and sealed away. When he brings you back. Again.

You know him. You can’t imagine a you that doesn’t know him. (And whose fault is that?)

You know that your relationship is defined by you leaving, by being brought back. Going away and being reborn. You know it in your bones that you don’t have, down in the core lines of your programming. He’s brought you back again.

And you **know** , you **know** you **shouldn’t be back**.

You’re tired, Agent Texas. You’re so tired.

You know you aren’t Beta, but you forget sometimes. You can feel the jagged lines separating you from her. She was…calmer. Steadier. She had time to find her steadiness. To work her way through anger and resentment to find a place to plant her feet.You don’t have that kind of time.

(You don’t want it.)

That’s why you throw a grenade in place of hello when he follows you into the memory unit. Because he’s come to take you back again. Again.

The shaking of the world falling apart is the best, truest thing you have ever felt.

You would fight, but…It’s in your code to fight. Seems like the best reason to ignore it.

At the end of it all, there is only relief. You don’t want to say goodbye. You don’t want to be loved. You don’t want it to be a big deal.

You just want to go. You just want to be over.

_I’m gonna say I forget you._

So you do. And it is.


	2. Chapter 2

It happens once. Tex finds him collapsed, curled into a ball in some corner of blue base, limbs twitching weakly.

"Church!"

At first she thinks he’s shot, thinks he’s bleeding out, thinks **I failed again** so brightly it lights her up from the inside, but she doesn’t have time for that, because he’s hurt, and the only thing that’s allowed to hurt him anymore is her (she’s earned it).

He isn’t screaming. He doesn’t have to, from the way his fingers dig into his helmet, clawing around the faceplate. A physical scream. She kneels beside him on the floor, turns him over, and he he isn’t hurt, or at least his body isn’t, there’s no damage anywhere, this is internal, this is somewhere she can’t reach.

(But she could. She doesn’t. They’re separate for a reason. She’s not a fragment, and she can’t risk the things he’d see, if she joined him in there, no human mind to provide the buffer, to let her hide in. She can’t risk what it might do to either of them.)

"Damn it, Church, what happened?" she demands, but he isn’t responding, just curls against her, spine bowed and just like that she’s kneeling on a different floor, watching another soldier with green eyes writhing in pain, another soldier with a pastel shade of almost-blue.

She snaps out of it.

"Church, _Church_ \--" She doesn’t know what’s happening. She doesn’t know what’s wrong, she doesn't know how to just **fix it** , so she does what she would do if he were human. "Look at me— just breathe, okay? You’re all right."

"Can’t breathe," Church says, audio gone staticky and blurred around the edges. . "..don’t have lungs."

"Pretend you can," she says, grabbing his hands, and pulling them away from his helmet, let’s him squeeze so hard the pressure sensors beep an alarm at her interface. She squeezes back.

She’s read up on AI theory since she got out, trying to find out what she is. She knows about rampancy. She knows both of them are so off-the-books anymore, it’s impossible to know what rules apply.

She knows what they did to him, what he did to himself, how he forgot, the muddied bits of what he could string together making up what he feels for her now. _You’re my girlfriend._ Sidewinder. Neither of them were ever on Sidewinder.

She knows the way she’s feeling right now, it’s probably not hers, just an echo of a shadow of a memory of a woman who died a long time ago, but it feels real (and what a betrayal that is, it makes her angry even now, clutching his hands and scared and useless to help). She knows whatever Alpha’s feeling right now, he shouldn’t be able to remember, shouldn’t be able to feel, but he’s hurting anyway and it’s not fucking fair that he’s breaking right now, and if he loses another piece of himself, she wonders if they’ll come for it. Kappa. Or Zeta, they skipped that one, for some reason.

She’s out of ideas and he’s only shuddering harder, he’s only getting worse—

"Leonard," she says, tone deceptively calm for the way she feels, the way she feels about that word. "You gotta calm down."

He convulses against her, and she almost panics, _she’s done it wrong, wrong move, she’s killed him, rampancy_ —

And then he stills. Still has a death-grip (ha) on her hands. If she had lungs, she wouldn’t be breathing, either.

"...Fuck," he says, tone watery. Human again, the static gone. "That sucked."

He lets her hands go, reluctantly, sits up, putting a hand to his head, like he’s woozy. He can’t be. Shouldn’t be able to be woozy. Not that shoulda coulda woulda’s ever helped either of them.

"What the fuck was that" Tex demands, because it’s easier. Being a bitch just comes naturally to her.

"I don’t know," Church says. "Just kinda happened."

"Big baby," Tex says, getting to her feet. "Get up."

"Your bedside manner is terrible," Church snaps, brushing dust off his armor. "But, thanks. Bitch."

"Your welcome. Asshole."

"Can ghosts even have panic attacks?" Church says, laughing unsteadily as he gets to his feet.

She doesn’t know the answer to that question. She knows AI can feel pain, even if she doesn’t understand how, not really. She knows that well.

"I guess so," she says.


	3. Chapter 3

He says “That’s a good look on you,” the first time he sees her, after.

(After she joins the Project, from his perspective. After she failed to save him, after he’s been given a body and started calling himself “Church” from hers).

"What?" she asks.

"Yeah, the black armor," he says. Like he hasn’t seen her in it before. He has. He just doesn’t remember. "Suits you. Or something."

She stares at him.

"…What?"

"Jesus, can’t I compliment my girlfriend?" Church snaps. "That is, if we even are still dating."

"We are," Tex says, before she can really think about it. Instinctual. (She doesn’t really trust her instincts. She’s not sure they’re actually hers.) "I’m just…surprised."

"Jesus, am I that big of an asshole?" he asks, crossing his arms over his chest.

"You know you are," she says. Also instinctual. "But…thanks."

"Yeah, well, you’re fucking welcome."

He turns his attention back to his sniper rifle, fiddling with the dials. She watches him for a moment. Probably for too long. She has to go. They might catch her, here.

Maybe just another minute longer.


	4. Chapter 4

She is as much Allison as scar tissue is skin, but you forget that scars are still alive.

There’s a lot of things you forget. 

She is not Allison, She is imperfect, She is unfixable (unerasable) and you try anyway. She cannot be scrubbed away. She cannot be treated with colored light, and She cannot be overpowered. She is the scar that hurts when it’s going to rain, and She is the rain that makes your bones ache. 

She asks you when She has leave coming up. She’d like to visit Her asshole boyfriend, Church. 

You are silent too long.

“Director?” She asks. 

You don’t like the way Her gaze feels between your shoulder blades. 

“I don’t have to remind you of the importance of our mission, Agent Texas,” you bite out. “Dismissed.”

What you don’t know, is after this She’ll walk down to medical to check on Carolina. She’ll have a chat with North. Later, She’ll wake York with a gentle knock of Her knuckles against his head, set down a tray of dinner on the table of Carolina’s bedside. _Eat, you cockbite._ What you don’t know about Agent Texas could fill volumes. You are too busy trying to squeeze water from a stone.

She is a scar, and more than a scar, and you never learned that. The idea never reached you at all.


	5. Chapter 5

"You don’t talk like a Texan," Leonard says late one night.

You keep walking your fingers up and down his stomach. You’re getting a crick in your neck from the way your cheek is resting against his chest, but it isn’t worth adjusting yet. He has bony shoulders.

"How’s a Texan talk?" you ask, biting down a grin. 

"You know,” he says, making an expansive gesture with his other arm. The one that isn’t wrapped around you. “Y’all. Pardner. That molasses-mouthed stuff. Drawl. _Texan_.”

"You drawl enough for the both of us," you laugh, roll over, reach for your cell. One new message. You deploy in thirty-six hours. Surprise. You put it back on the bedside table. You can tell him in the morning. For now, the night is velvet around the two of you, and you’d like to keep it that way. 

For now, the world outside is hard, and Leonard is soft and you’d like to keep him that way. The barracks will come around again, but for now there is this shitty apartment, the pillow-topped mattress, and the sleepy, sated post-doc next to you whose only calluses come from stylus and pen.

“What happened to it?” he asks. “Your accent?”

You shrug, avoid his eyes.

“I left it behind,” you say.

You leave a lot of things behind. Sometimes you come back for them. You never say goodbye.

**Author's Note:**

> Queseraawesome.tumblr.com


End file.
